I don’t recall being much into coloring as a young child, but since I enjoy drawing and inking my drawings and have enjoyed helping my children with their own coloring projects, including at restaurants, I surmise that there’s always been some predilection towards filling areas in with specific colors to make something more attractive.
In fact, why don’t restaurants have coloring pages for adults? I’ve been to a few restaurants where they have paper tablecloths and crayons on the table, which is a good option, but what about all the other restaurants that leave you twiddling your thumbs or isolating yourself with a mobile device?
What you aren’t likely to get are coloring books. Why? Because the very concept of coloring books is obsolete, superseded by various coloring page Web sites or, in our case, Google Image Search.
There’s even a word for these sort of online pages now: printables.
You can get started by simply searching for “coloring pages” or, as I do, “free printable coloring pages”. Here’s what I get:
As you can see, lots of nice coloring pages. And here’s the secret: You can search for specific categories or keywords too, so a search for “fairy coloring pages” would work just as well and cut out all the stuff you — or your child — doesn’t want to see.
Find one you like? Or 10-15 as in my daughter’s case? Click on the image once, then click on “View Image” and print it. Easy.
The only wrinkle is copyright, of course, because these images are from hundreds, if not thousands of different Web sites, and not all of them have licenses from the copyright holders for coloring pages. For example, look above. There are three Disney images, one Thomas the Tank Engine image, Spongebob Squarepants and Pebbles from The Flintstones. Do you think that they’re all licensed from the companies? Yeah, not likely. Should you care? Theoretically yes, but in reality, if it’s just for your own child, it’s probably not a big deal.
In any case, coloring books? Prepare to watch them completely vanish from our world as personal printers and coloring apps replace them.